The Meq

their own prizefighting matches. Solomon loved that, but Carolina was bored stiff, agreeing with Mrs. Bennings’s axiom, “Public brawlin’s nothin’ but bad manners.” We even went to the Grand Opera House to see Verdi’s La Traviata and drew inquisitive glances from all around as we took our seats. Dressed in formal attire, we must have looked like some lost cast from another opera. Sailor seemed unaware of the attention and even sang along with the aria, “Di Miei Bollenti Spiriti,” under his breath. We were all busy enjoying life in St. Louis. We were shedding skins and it felt good.

Carolina already had her plan for the future in place along with the full approval and promise of financial backing from Solomon. I found out about it late one afternoon on a bicycle ride through Forest Park, something we tried to do together almost every day. Carolina had the lead and took me through and out of the northeastern entrance, past Laclede’s Pavilion and into the “old money” neighborhoods around the northern edge of the park.

“Where are we going?” I yelled ahead. She just looked back over her shoulder and smiled.

We were in the four thousand block of Westminster, an elegant tree-lined street with one Victorian stone mansion after another. We pedaled through bars of sunlight and shade cast by the huge oaks. It was a rich and silent street; a sanctuary. Suddenly a boy appeared out of the shadows and began running alongside us. He was a handsome, skinny boy, younger-looking than I was, but somehow older than his years, and he had obviously seen Carolina before. He wore knickerbockers with a white shirt and tie and he was smiling as he ran.

“Hello, Thomas!” Carolina shouted.

“Hello, Miss Covington!” the boy shouted back as he tried to keep up. “Will you be stopping this time?”

“No, no. Now, watch where you’re going or you’ll run smack into a tree, Thomas.”

“Don’t worry about me, Miss Covington,” he yelled, but his voice was already behind us. I looked back; he had stopped and was standing in the street and staring at the receding image of Carolina on a bicycle. We rode on a bit and I asked who that was and how he knew her.

“His name is Thomas Eliot,” she said. “He’s a nice boy — wants to be a writer.” She stopped her bicycle and I pulled up alongside her.

“Well, I think you’ve already inspired him to write something,” I said.

She laughed and pointed toward the brick and stone mansion in front of her. “Look at this place, Z. Just look at it.”

I looked at it and it was magnificent, with three stories, climbing vines, big leaded windows, stone verandas, and a driveway that led under a brick arch back to a carriage house half the size of the main house.

“Thomas told me the family that owns it has it quietly up for sale,” she said.

I was still confused. “How do you and Thomas know each other?”

She leaned her bicycle against a tree and started pacing back and forth, looking over the property. “I’ve been riding through here and thinking, Z, about a lot of things. One day, he just came up to me, right here where I’m standing, and we started talking. He’s home from boarding school and I think he was just lonely. He and his family live back there where we saw him and he told me about most of the families in the neighborhood. Most of the things I need to know.”

“You need to know for what?”

“To start a new life. Right here.”

I turned in a circle and looked around at where we were. I saw nothing but wealth couched in castles of abstinence, discipline, and propriety — very conservative, very Victorian.

“Doing what?” I asked and Carolina looked right at me. Her eyes were bright and her freckles stood out.

“I thought about it, Z. It came to me the other day when I read in the newspaper that there’s going to be two national political conventions in St. Louis this summer, and Union Station’s got more railroads coming in and out than any other point in the United States, and ‘old money’ like their vices close by, they don’t like the risk in risque, and then, at the opera, I was sure of it; I studied the faces around me and I knew, I knew, this was the right place.”

“The right place for what?”

“A whorehouse.”

I looked around again. “Here? In this house? On this street?”

“Yes. That’s the beauty of it. What they can’t get at home, they can get right next door, or at least down the street, or down the street from someone they know. Private. Expensive. Very discreet and filled with beautiful, intelligent women who want to be there, not have to be there.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Yes.”

“And Solomon agrees?”

“Yes.”

“Does Thomas Eliot know he’s going to be living in a red-light district?”

She laughed and said, “No, and don’t tell him either. He’ll think we’re the Muses. And we will be.”

We got back on our bicycles and rode until we turned on McPherson and stopped for chocolate at Bissinger’s. I was still thinking about her plan, seeing only disadvantages. “Seriously, Carolina, is this what you want to do? It is against the law, you know?”

“It’s what I know how to do, Z. It’s what Georgia and I learned. I can’t just quit because Georgia’s gone and it’s illegal. I never make anyone do anything they don’t want to do and I won’t allow anyone around who does. I’ll have Li close by to make sure of that. I’ll also bet ‘the law’ is our best customer.”

“I guess it is better than having babies.”

“Don’t make fun of me, Z. Just because I’m for one thing doesn’t mean I’m against another.”

“I’m sorry, that was stupid.”

“I love babies,” she said.

There was an awkward moment that passed between us. It happened rarely, but it did happen; the unspoken knowledge and fact that our difference wasn’t just in our remarks, it was deeper in the blood, further back in time. It was a difference that we ignored, but would forever keep us apart, a difference we could not change. Carolina used the tension to tell me more.

“Another thing, Z. I know you’ve been thinking about that evil one, that one that did those things to Mrs. Bennings and Georgia. I want you to stop. I want you to let it go and remember Georgia, not avenge her. I know Sailor wants you to do something, not about that, but about something else. I don’t know what it is, but I think you ought to do it. For your own good.”

Her words hit me hard. Inside, underneath everything else, I knew she was right. I was changing, but all I was really changing was one obsession for another. In my heart of hearts, chasing Sailor had turned into chasing the Fleur-du-Mal, and for all the wrong reasons. I knew she was right about Sailor too. I knew he wanted me to do something, but he hadn’t mentioned his “offer” since that first day.

“I hope you have lots of babies,” I said, “and I hereby bestow Mama’s baseball glove upon your firstborn.”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

We rode our bicycles back the way we came and turned them in at Forest Park. We walked back to the Statler Hotel in the twilight, a long walk, but a good one at that time of year. The next day Sailor made his “offer.”

We took the train west out of Union Station to the Meramec Highlands, an amusement park that the Frisco Railroad had a direct line to, hauling five hundred passengers a day. Once there, you could ride horses, pedal bicycles, row boats, or swim in the Meramec River. “Privacy in Public” was their motto.

Solomon, Carolina, and Ray chose horseback riding. Sailor said he wanted to row a boat and he asked for my company. As we launched our boat, I asked him if he didn’t think the name “Mera-mec” was ironic, considering the circumstances. He said no, he hadn’t thought about it, but that was in the area of what he wanted to discuss. We set out on the water, Sailor rowing easily, gracefully, better than any twelve-year-old in the world.

Several minutes passed. I watched his concentration and the way every stroke was complete, none more important than the other, each with a meaning all its own. While still rowing, he said, “I am reminded of the first